


Penitent

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
Genre: Caning, Dom/sub, F/M, Forgiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-19
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-10 06:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/463274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane and her husband deal with their past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penitent

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I was rather startled, and indignant, even, at the idea of an e-press recently releasing mash-ups of various classics to add sexy bits. Jane Eyre was included amongst the titles. I commented that I might not agree with the sexual dynamic portrayed, and joked that maybe Mr Rochester was ripe for a little discipline from his governess. My comment was a joke but the story, a lightning strike of an idea, is written in all seriousness. My words are quite separate to Charlotte Bronte's, and I'm relieved that she will never see how I played with her characters.
> 
> And of course, after the event, I remembered that if Edward can see here then I've bolluxed the time line. Well then. AU?

_Reader, I married him._

I talked of many things with my Edward in those first happy weeks. A perfect understanding creates perfect trust, but that perfection could not completely erase the scars of grief and fear.

Edward had played games with me, with his friends, in the past. They were not always kind games. But whatever else one might say of my beloved, he possesses a raw courage which did not fail him. His travels upon the continent as a young man had led him strange places, and Edward suggested a way to purge certain feelings from us both, which threatened the peace which we hoped to find together.

I was uncertain at first, but the strange fluttering within my belly was a harbinger of my eventual agreement, my eventual anticipation even, for this ritual, and ritual it was, as solemn as the ritual at the church which joined us .

I had retained a plain dress or two. I was not Edward’s doll to dress, and there was wear in my old black yet. I stood, waiting in our bedchamber. Upon the bureau there lay a piece of cane, resting upon a red velvet runner. I stood there, my hands joined across my stomach, waiting for the arrival of Mr Rochester. I had summoned him, you see, and it was precisely Mr Rochester I had summoned, not my Edward. Mr Rochester, in his arrogance and despair, had toyed with people. He had denied a husband’s fidelity of heart to poor mad Bertha; he had played with Blanche Ingram, deceiving her (and me) as to his intentions. He had attempted the debauchery of an innocent, friendless young woman. For these things, he must be punished.

I remembered Miss Scatcherd of Lowood, and suspected with the new knowledge that Edward had given me that I understood her even better now. I would not be Miss Scatcherd, whatever the temptation.

My penitent entered. There was a flush upon his cheeks – shame? I dared hope so.

“You will not need your clothes, sir.”

A flinch, as at an unexpected blow, twitched his body, and he averted his face. Was my voice so very cold? Then, he followed my instructions, awkward and graceless sometimes, one-handed as he is. But, stubborn as he also is, he had succeeded in learning the single-handed task long ago. His clothing was placed neatly upon a chair. There remained only one item left.

“That also,” I said, nodding towards the bandage that covered the end of his arm. He sighed, a low mournful noise like the wind over the moors, and he obeyed. He had avoided my eyes for most of this , but now he looked at me. He was shamed, but gave me evidence of his excitement also. I pointedly directed my gaze to his groin and raised one brow.

“Fetch me the instrument of correction.” They were words I had heard often at Lowood, addressed to myself, and others, but I had never myself said them, until now. He turned his back upon me, his skin fair and goose-pimpling a little. The muscles of his shoulders, broad as a blacksmith’s, moved pleasingly as he took the cane, grasping it in the middle and presenting it to me like a stick held in mouth of a dog.

I took it from him, holding the end, and tapped the edge of it against my palm.

“Now. Kneel.”

He dropped, first on one knee, then the other, in submission before me, and I admit that my heart rose in a strange manner, and the bodily desire that my Edward had awakened in me caught me unexpectedly. But this was not Edward. This was Mr Rochester.

“Tell me, sir. Why are you here, downcast and naked?”

His eyes were shut. His chest moved as if he could not ever breathe deeply enough.

“Because I have been a liar and a cheat and a betrayer.”

“And will you be those things again, after tonight?”

His eyes rose to mine, dark as a peat pool, and shining with unshed tears. “No, my Jane,” he said to me, gruff and deep as a captive bear. “Never again.”

“Then let this seal the bargain,” I declared, and swung the first blow.

“You need not hold back” he had told me, as we planned this. It was needless counsel. Passionate; I have been called that more than once, berated and reproved for it, but my passion had given me strength, and God knows that I have needed it. I laid six stripes upon his back and shoulders, and stopped because, for once, I feared passion in myself.

The tears that had waited in Mr Rochester’s eyes overflowed, but without a sound. We both of us restrained ourselves even as we let something else loose. He was still aroused, only one passion released in him by his tears.

My heart was beating like a bird’s, wild and quick. I put the cane down upon the bed and stepped lightly in front of him, Mr Rochester still, not my Edward. With one foot I gently nudged at his groin, and he groaned.

I leaned down to take his chin in my hand and tilted his face up so that we looked one another in the eyes, before I released him and stood back.

“I will not touch you. But you may pleasure yourself, and make sure you look upon me as you do it.” I do not know where the command came from, for command it was. He looked upon me, startled and taken aback. He reached for himself, hesitant, and I snapped, “Let us not waste time.”

His eyes burned with a look that he had graced me with many a time, and he caressed himself according to my command, until he spent, his eyes locked with mine throughout. He finished with a deep, long cry, and while my body remained unsated, something in my heart and in the pit of my belly reached such a pitch that I thought that I might cry out with it also.

And that was the end. I sank to my knees, and took my Edward’s head upon my shoulder.


End file.
